Chapter Text
Easter came and went without a hitch, or more importantly, without Pitch. He wasn't sure why he hadn't brought it up to the other Guardians, but for the moment he kept the fact that Black had returned under his hood. In the mean time, Jack was busy, bringing snow and ice to all the regions in the far east. A winter wonderland for every country, that wasn't already covered in snow. Jack loved country hopping, and right now he was in the city of Beijing, in the people's republic of China. There was nothing better, than the sight of all those lights, reflecting so beautifully off a fresh layer of white powdered snow, and Jack had laid it on thick this year. Ten to twelve inches accumulated already and he had more planned over the evening. China was getting a lot of snow this year, school was going to be out for three days at the minimum, maybe even a week. Millions of building windows to frost, hundreds of streets to block with snow so school buses wouldn't be able to go out in the morning. It was a beautiful sight and he took in everything as he flew through the streets, taking his time as he went along. Not many people on the streets in the middle of the night. Earlier if Jack looked up he would have seen strands of Sandy's golden dreams, twisting and flowing their way into children's rooms to give them the perfect dreams, but all the kids had gone to bed hours ago, and had been taken care of, sleeping soundly as Jack worked late into the night.
Strolling down the sidewalk, ducking into a back alley behind a Ya Wang restaurant, he picked up all sorts of smells that glided through the air. "If only it was open" he said with a grin, staff over his shoulder as he strode and began to whistle. The alley way held an amazing acoustic and the cold winds carried them through the night. If you have ever heard the high pitch sounds of the winds as they blew by, you were without a doubt, hearing the sound of Jack Frost, whistling away in the cold winter air.
"That's a very, lovely, melody Jack" called a deep echoed voice that slithered through the alley way and into Jack's ear. The winter spirits hands gripped tight to his staff knees bending slightly as he whipped around, looking every which way for the sound of foreign voice. A chuckle resounded around him as the shadows grew higher on the walls. He knew that laugh, he knew that voice, only confirmed by the shape of a man the shadows began to form into.
"Pitch" Jack said, looking around at all the multiple shadows of the man he had met again only a few months ago. "What are you doing here?" He asked pointedly, standing up straight again but keeping a firm hold on his staff.
"It's good to see you too, Jack." The shadows growing bigger until they were blacking out the alley. Jack squeezed the twisted wooden staff, and as the magic flowed through it, it glowed a bright blue, waving it around hastily to break up that over whelming dark.
"Come out Pitch. I already told you, you can't scare me" Holding the shining staff towards the closest wall to reflect that light off it, increasing it's glow.
"Always such bravado" Pitch cooed darkly, an arm reaching out of the shadows and snapping up Jack's staff, relinquishing its bright light.
"Hey-!" Jack snapped turning toward the tall dark figure that slunk out into the shadows of the snow coated alleyway.
"Oh now don't go getting snow don't your knickers Frost" Pitch began. "It's not as if I could actually use this-" He said, with a hint of venom as he held the thing, clutched in his hands, looking at it with contempt, as if hoping that if he held it tight enough he could.
"-This over grown glow stick" Fingers slowly loosened as he flipped the head of until it was facing right side up again. "I'm powerless...remember?" He scoffed and extended his arm out, and the staff back to its rightful owner, who snapped it back up and held it behind him a bit more than he normally did.
"What do you want Pitch?" Jack asked. His head tilted as he noticed the man had no marks on him, and was walking without the limp he carried the last they met. "You look like you're feeling back to your good old' oogey boogey self." Getting that snarky tone back that he always seemed to carry around the other.
Pitch put his hands up and clapped them together slowly for a minute as he paced around the young spirit. "Bravo. So someone finally started to notice things around them other than, himself-" He spat. "Cookie for you..." He grumbled arms placed behind his back as he walked. "Although I suppose that is more North's breakfast of choice isn't it. But then- with all the time you spend up in his little workshops, perhaps you've picked up some of his disgusting habits as well, along with his sickeningly sappy words of wisdom." Phasing into a shadow and disappearing before the Guardians eyes.
"What was that you were saying before?" Black echoed around Jack. "Something about my 'center', and Fear..." Snapping his fingers as he reappeared behind Jack. "Ah yes" Putting his hands on Frost's shoulders as he leaned down to husk lowly. "Fear doesn't have to be used for evil."
Jack jumped at the sudden contact and shrugged himself out of those hands, putting distance between them, heart picking up a bit at the sudden surprise, to which Pitch only let out another menacingly low laugh.
"I thought you weren't afraid of me Jack" Putting his arms behind his back and holding them there as he starred down the shoe-less man.
"I've never been afraid of you, Boogey." Jack said shrugging off that lingering feeling of long fingers.
"No." Black said in agreement. "You haven't, have you..." The taller looking over his shoulder to the newest guardian. Jack was the first in a long, long, period of time that hadn't feared him, or his return. The bunny said he didn't but then what didn't the rabbit lie about when it came to his own weaknesses.
"What are you doing here Pitch, you following me? Trying to figure out the fine tunings of how to have fun?" A cheeky grin toyed with the darker man, but he didn't answer. Pitch only turned his head back and continued pacing around him, if a bit slower than he had before, and that change in behavior brought up something Jack had wanted to ask the last time the met.
"And ya know the last time I saw you, you were being attacked by a fear stead. I thought those things could fly- and... they're still after you?" He said with a quizzical tone. "And more importantly-" He said pointing a finger at the shadow. "If they were your nightmares, how come they turned on you?"
Pitch stopped completely, frozen to current footing as the pale boy interrogated him. "And exactly what business is that of yours?" he quipped defensively back at him, refusing to meet his gaze.
"Because if it wasn't for me, your butt would still be stuck up a tree while that nightmare tried to bash it down" A smug look in place. "So spit it out boogey. What was with the bullying act?" tapping his staff on his shoulder, shifting his weight slightly on his feet.
The boogeyman felt his own fingers claw into his arm he was holding in annoyance, a scowl twitching at his lips as he turned his head back over his shoulder to give his regards, and then the rest of him as well.
"Very well. You want to know so badly? Fine." beginning his circled steps around the other again. "Those nightmares, aren't mine." He stated flatly, with a scorned tone underneath, putting a hand to his chest for emphasis. "Nightmares at their very cores, are dreams. In order to create a nightmare, I needed the Sandman's dream sand." Conjuring up a bit of the black glittering sand in his hand. "It took years to perfect the technique, but after a few flounced I finally created the very first 'fearlings'." Grasping the air with pride as he thought over his accomplishments. He let those fists roll open as he went on. "Oh such beautiful nightmares" He cooed, arms lowering slightly as he continued his path around Jack. As his arms fell to his sides, his smile faded and his features grew somber. "But-" He began, looking away from the younger now. "You can't control dreams." a scowl forming at the corners of his mouth as he spoke. "You can only give them form....manipulate them, if you have the power" clenching his fist in the air as he spoke of power. "Once that power dissipates....well. You were there for that particular visual. Hardly needs explaining." That sour tone back with a vengeance.
Jack didn't know what to say. He just stood, feet feeling that cold that he was usually so accustomed to, only now there was a real hint of that frigid temperature as he shifted, empathy hitting him like a burst of cold north winds. Contrary to popular belief Jack did care about others. Sure for a while he may have put that on a back burner, 300 years to be precise, but he had to figure out who he was before he could begin to help anyone else. Now that he knew who he was and where he came from, he was a Guardian, to protect the children, and the spirits they believed in.
"Have I actually silenced the great Jack Frost?" Pitch mocked, stopping his narrative pacing. "No small feet." He teased putting a hand to his lips as he looked on.
"No, I-" Jack began, but was tripping over words he didn't have planned. "....I'm sorry."
Now it was Black's turn to be struck silent. "You're.....sorry?" He said disbelievingly, a slight snort as he starred the younger down with doubt. Jack remained still and cold, but Pitch couldn't say he didn't like that about the younger. "You should be." He said, turning his chin up and getting prideful again. "If it weren't for you and your pathetic band of half wit holidays-, my nightmares would have grown even more powerful." Clenching his fists before stretching them out as if to display himself to the world. "Have you ever heard of a night terror, Jack?" Moving back to his crow like circling "They're a wondrous thing to behold" Pointed fingers moving out toward that pale skin and trailing along the boy's jawline.
Jack's eyes widened it seemed, more than North's when they were 'full of wonder'. He felt his chest pick up as his heart beat harder and faster. It was an unnerving feeling, to be touched after hundreds of years of being nothing but incorporeal. It happened the same when Jamie hugged him, but that felt warmer, innocent, and caring. This- this felt entirely cold, and coming from Jack frost that was saying something. He was finally believed in, but actual physical contact was still few and far in between. He finally understood where North was coming from when he said they were 'too busy for children'. Bringing joy is a full time job, and everywhere, some place always needed new snow. He tried his hardest to always make time for a few kids here and there, he always would, but busy was still busy. He was a guardian now. Jack's brows knit together as he broke out of his own stupor and jerked his face away from that hand, but Pitch just gave a low laugh and pinched it all the same, jostling it between his fingers before he did finally let go.
"I haven't- and I won't." he spat bravely. "Because they'll never come to be." Holding onto his staff tighter in his hands as he kept the thing pointed in Pitch's direction, but it didn't frighten the taller. Facial expression unphased by it, the nightmare just stood there in front of him.
"Are you going to fight me Jack?" He asked, dark eyes boring into ice blues. "Going to kill... the boogeyman?"
Jack's features stayed boldly locked onto that looming darkness, and a gaze that looked as if the sun itself had been eclipsed by eternal night. Though as he stared him down that hardened expression ease, lowering his readied defense. "No" he said, if a bit reluctantly. It wasn't that he wanted Pitch gone, he just wanted him to stop what he was doing, what he was trying to do. The sudden realization hit him as fast and as hard as an mistaken ice ball to the face instead of a snow ball. No part of him ever really wanted Pitch gone, not in the slightest. All the other guardians seemed terrified of him, or hateful, but Jack never really felt that way. He never actually even knew him, heck the first time he had met him was at Tooth's teeth palace, and after all that crisis and commotion Jack saw that rare glimpse of Pitch no one else had when he thought all was lost up in the arctic. That genuine moment of heart, of feeling, of a deep loneliness that hit very close to home as Black went on about family, about belonging and being believed in. "No I don't" he said, head angled down slightly still but ice blues rising right up to pin point Pitch's. "I wanna help" and in that moment he lowered his staff, pointing the of it head down completely as his own rose and just looking across to that shadowed man.
Pitch himself had to pause, feet frozen in place in that cold snow, with features reflecting something neither man could put a finger on. Black's brows were knit, but only for a moment before they eased up sightly. "Help?" Pitch repeated. "Help with what?" and in that instant Jack finally had an answer.
"Help you belong" He said simply, and without a wavering doubt.
Pitch was taken back by the sudden look of sincerity the younger held. Part of it disgusted him to the core and he flinched a step back as if someone turned on a flash light right onto him. Hands hitched up, but fell again as he continued to look lost in translation. Dark eyes searched every feature of the frozen fool's face and it only made him more uneasy when he couldn't detect a trace of treachery. "I don't belong." he spat with a sneer. "The Dark Ages have long gone" he husked, almost not wanting to admit it, but unable to deny it either "-and the world has become a sickening place of hope and love" spitting out the last words with contempt. "I exist only in the limbo of our world...and theirs" brushing a hand off in the direction of the high rise apartment buildings around them. "Neither living nor dead. Neither here nor gone-" turning away from the guardian "A shadowed existence of what once was." A bit of a jadedly cold chuckle at the irony of it all. "Funny old world isn't it?" he chided sarcastically. "You can't help me Jack." He said simply and began moving back off into the shadows of that darkened back alleyway.
Jack stood there, pity seeming to run through him like a cold breeze of wind through your body on a somber winter day. His eyes moving over the man walking away from him yet again, but this time, something spurred him forward. Jack pushed off that snow covered concrete and reached out as fast as he could to grab a handful of Pitch's dark robe before the nightmare could disappear back into the shadows. "Pitch wait-!" he cried, gripping that cloth firmly in a fist and tugging the man back towards him. Pitch was stopped indeed but easier than Jack accounted for and found his face colliding with the boogeyman's side. Pitch looked down in an almost shocked outrage "Get off-!" he spat hastily, moving to push that hand off of him but Jack mindlessly persisted and as a grey colored hand snaked to his he did indeed let go, and grabbed it instead. "No!" Jack shouted back.
For the first time in ages, in so many centuries that came and went since he could remember, someone was touching him. Pitch looked down, a mix of fear and alarm at the feeling of those fingers, cold and light skinned, wrapped tightly around his darker ones, if he believed he a heart anymore he would have thought it to be pounding up into his throat. Jack too was a bit taken back by his own actions, and as he looked up into a face that so reminded him of a panicked winter hare, or a doe caught in an open field, they locked eyes and stilled, as if both were waiting for the other to react or move. Neither seemed to know how to do that however as they just stilled in conjoined alarm.
After a moment Jack started to produce sound again "Uh...I-" looking to their hands and then back to the taller. He cleared his throat and fought the confidence forward. "I said- ....no." Standing up straight again, feet finding a sturdier stand and holding that hand tighter in his. He could feel Pitch pulling it back but Jack wouldn't allow it. "I can help you." he said bravely. "If you just- let me-" he emphasized tugging it back toward him as if demanding the man stay. "I can." and meet the other man's eyes again. "I can help you-" tugging the Boogeyman forward, the shadows shoes being dragged forward through the small layer of snow that built up around them, leaving a small skidded trail behind them, as Pitch began to resemble a reluctant black cat about ready to claw at the cold kid before him. "-if you just stop running away!" Jack boomed with a finality that wasn't backing down. That hand that was poised to attack was twitching hesitantly and after another silent moment of uncertainty, though seemingly only from the shadows side, began to lower and fall away. The nightmare's eyes darted down to their hands and then back up to Jack a rebellious reluctance frowning over his features. He didn't like this, but he spoke up and uttered
....
"How?"